October 15, 2024 • 39 mins
Host Dan Balcauski sits down with Ajoy Krishnamoorthy, CEO of Cin7. Ajoy, with over two decades of experience, shares insights from his career transition from engineering to executive leadership. He discusses his journey and the pivotal moments that shaped his approach to business. The conversation explores Cin7's mission to empower sellers in the commerce industry, the challenges they've overcome, and how they leverage AI to enhance internal operations and customer experiences. Ajoy emphasizes the importance of continuous improvement, a customer-first mentality, and pragmatic approaches to AI implementation and pricing strategies. Join us to explore leadership, innovation, and driving growth in the SaaS world.
01:01 Ajoy Krishnamoorthy's Superhero Transformation Moment
01:51 The Impact of Business School on Career
05:35 From Product Management to CEO
06:34 The Role of a CEO: Practitioner vs. Preacher
07:57 The Importance of Cross-Disciplinary Leadership
12:01 Challenges and Opportunities at Cin7
15:20 Cin7's Customer-Centric Vision
18:43 Continuous Improvement and Team Motivation
20:55 The Power of Incremental Progress
21:45 Embracing AI with Purpose
28:27 Lessons Learned in AI and Pricing
36:21 Driving Customer-Centric Growth
Guest Links
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajoykrishnamoorthy/
cin7.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
dan-balcauski (00:20):
Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets, the podcast
that dives in the trenches withthe leaders of the best scale up
B2B SaaS companies.
I'm your host, Dan Balcauski,founder of Product Tranquility.
Today, I have the privilege ofinterviewing Ajoy
Krishnamoorthy.
Ajoy is the CEO of Cin7, aleading provider of inventory
and order management software.
With over two decades ofexperience in the tech industry,
Ajoy has navigated roles fromengineering to product
(00:40):
management and executiveleadership, leaving his mark on
companies like Microsoft,Acumatica, and taking the helm
at Cin7.
Let's dive in.
Welcome, Ajoy, to SaaS ScalingSecrets.
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (00:51):
Awesome.
Great to be here, Dan.
Thanks for having me.
I'm excited about theconversation today.
dan-balcauski (00:56):
I am as well very excited to get a chance to sit
down after a long summer.
Look, we all have moments in ourlives that really sort of shift
our perspective, our mindset,our worldview.
I sometimes refer to this asyour superhero transformation
moment.
What for you was your, I'm PeterParker, normal high school kid.
(01:18):
I get bit by a radioactivespider, went to sleep, woke up
and everything is differentmoment.
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (01:25):
Yeah, so this one day I was walking in my
campus and lightning strikes me.
No, I'm kidding.
dan-balcauski (01:33):
I it happens.
I know.
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (01:36):
you there.
No, actually for me, I mean, youtalked about having an
engineering and product and soon.
I mean, I grew up writing a lotof code and I did that when I
was in school and so on.
From a, if you reflect, juststep back and look at the
overall career progression andso on.
For me, I think the time I spentin my graduate school, I
intentionally went and got myMBA and to me, I think that
(01:59):
opened up some of the aspectsthat I've never thought about in
my life, right?
In terms of the underpinnings ofthe business and how we think
about customers, how we thinkabout the numbers behind the
business.
The customer interactions.
And I have appreciation for alot of the problems now in a
different perspective than I hadbefore as an engineer, so to
speak.
So to me, I don't know if it'sthe, Peter Parker superhero
(02:22):
transition moment, but it wasdefinitely a, something that got
me out of my skin, so to speak.
What I felt comfortable talkingto a machine to feeling a lot
more comfortable talking topeople, articulating the pain
points and value propositionsand all that fun stuff that
comes with.
Explaining what you're workingon.
To me, that, that was a bigtrans, I guess, I don't know if
(02:44):
it's transformation, but big,transition phase for me from a
career standpoint.
dan-balcauski (02:49):
Yeah, I went through a very similar
transition from an engineeringworld into an MBA and then into
product management side.
So, definitely some key momentsduring business school.
I remember, I think one of themwas a, Decision Sciences, where
you're learning like, okay,well, you're the leader of a
company.
You got to decide whether, CEOof Intel, you got to decide
(03:09):
whether to spend 10 billion onbuilding a new fab.
How do you think of thatdecision?
And then learning about all thepsychological biases that come
into effect and how do we useanalytical methods to actually.
Sort of correct for those andunderstand them.
Was there a specific, any sortof specific class or teacher, or
maybe it was even interactionwith your your peer that was
(03:30):
particularly memorable in thattransformation for you?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (03:33):
Yeah.
I mean, I loved all of the casestudies we did.
It really grounded us onsomething that's meaningful.
These are not fictional casestudies.
These are actual companies thatwe looked at.
and understood the good, thebad, the ugly.
And and there was one professorwho was actually working in
retirement fund at the time.
And he came and taught us someof the macroeconomics.
And I was always a big fan ofmacroeconomics.
(03:57):
I really want to have a careerin that, to be honest, back in
the day took on software becausethe money seemed a lot more
easier to get to, when you wereyoung.
But Macroeconomics was an areaof passion.
In fact, people joke about likewhen you take classes like that,
when are you ever going to useit, right?
There was one class that I tookaround behavioral economics.
Okay.
I was actually using somethingfrom that class today in a
(04:19):
meeting that we had aroundpricing strategy for one of the
new module that we're going toput into market.
So, sometimes, it's the thingsthat you take for granted.
You go like, yeah, I'm nevergoing to use it.
But it just cements, certainbeliefs and ideas that continues
to come back to you, right?
You're constantly thinking abouthow you apply them when you're
not actively going and pursuinga book and say, let me open up
(04:40):
page 23 and look at this model.
That's not how decisions aremade, right?
You're constantly thinking aboutstuff on the go.
So to your question, yeah, it'sthe professor, that was running
a, he was essentially investmentmanager for the retirement fund.
He was amazing, like the stuffthat he brought to the classroom
with his real world experienceabout making investment
decisions, tying that into howwe think about the macro
(05:01):
climate, what happens when, Imean, it's a hot topic now with
the interest rates and so on.
How do we think about adjustingthe interest rates?
What does it mean to the globaleconomy and this and that?
It was super fascinating to me.
dan-balcauski (05:13):
Yeah, I love the, well the macroeconomics always
good for helping you at the pubto debate what's going to happen
in the stock market and theglobal economy, if nothing else.
And big fan of behavioraleconomics myself, I've got over
on the bookshelf RichardThaler's, Misbehaving and yes,
it comes into people's minds.
Practice a lot, my world.
You dropped a bunch of nuggetsthere about the good, the bad,
(05:33):
the ugly and case studies, andthis is SaaS Scaling Secrets.
So we're going to get into someof the good, bad, the ugly with
Cin7 as well as pricing, whichis near and dear to my heart, I
want to dive into those topics,but before we do that, I know
that before your promotion tothe top job at Cin7, you were in
the chief product officer roleand then, obviously had a career
in product leadership beforethen.
I'm curious.
(05:54):
Has moving into the CEO rolechanged your view on product
management in any way that'smaybe surprised you?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (06:04):
I don't think it's changed my view.
I've always, again now literallythis last weekend, there is this
big around this founder's modethat's been floating around.
I'm sure you've caught that too.
And this is actually a referenceto uh, Airbnb founder
Branschewski's talk at the YCclass and Paul Graham wrote this
post about being in this foundermode.
(06:26):
For me, I personally thoughtabout operating, doing, I don't
think that was the moniker thatwe used.
I always say, when people askme, what kind of leader are you?
I'm a practitioner, not apreacher, right?
That's the term that I've alwaysused, right?
I like to do things.
I like to be in the know, not somuch in the, for being a
micromanaging, which I'm suresome people took it that.
(06:48):
But that's how I learned, likeI'm not a, I'm not a textbook
learner.
I don't just go pick up a bookand read and go like, I got
this.
No, I have to practice things.
My learning comes from me justtinkering with things.
Like if I don't tinker withthings, I forget it, right?
So that drove me to be always bein the weeds, so to speak,
understanding things and how itworks and what's working, what's
(07:10):
not working.
I think that perspective helpedme a lot in the product role
because, as a product person,you've got to understand the
good and the bad and what's theprocess, what's the, progress
we're making with productinvestments.
To me, I think, if anything, ithelps me a lot to play my role
as a CEO with a lot ofcredibility, right?
My employees understand whereI'm coming from because when I
(07:32):
make some statements and asksand so on, they You know, they
know for the most part I knowwhat I'm talking about.
Not always, but for the mostpart.
My kids might disagree, butthat's besides the point.
And same thing when I'm talkingto customers.
I spend a lot of time talking toour customers, which is
something that I love doing.
And and they immediatelyunderstand and recognize I can
(07:52):
talk beyond what the team hasbriefed me on.
And I think that's superimportant reflection for me.
That's something that I'veconsidered very fortunate being
in that path, going from being aproduct person into the CEO
role, but at the end of the day,right, irrespective of the title
and the role, because I rememberhaving a conversation, Dan,
similar to this in anotherpodcast, they asked me, is there
(08:12):
a benefit of a product leadergoing into the CEO role versus a
sales leader going into a CEOrole?
I think it's overstated, to behonest.
I know people go, Oh my gosh,the engineer now is a CEO.
That's the best thing.
Oh, product guy is a CEO.
That's the best thing.
I don't think it matters.
At the end of the day, a goodleader is a good leader.
I don't think, you being a goodsalesperson necessarily makes
(08:35):
you a CEO.
You being a good product personnecessarily makes you a good
CEO.
I always hold certain principlesin life.
This whole, practice, practicingversus preaching.
I always think about thingslike, things that are always
going to go wrong, right?
We're dealing with complexsituations and so on.
There's always some escalationsor the other.
I think about things like, it's10 percent what happened, 90
(08:55):
percent how you react to it andstuff like that people attach to
you, not when you say it, butwhen you practice it.
You say it, people go, yeah,whatever, roll their eyes and
walk away.
Yeah, it sounds good on paper,but then are you willing to live
it?
When you get into a situation asa leader, irrespective of what
role you play, you can be a GM,you can be a VP, you can be a
CEO, product guy, sales guy,marketing, doesn't matter.
(09:17):
That's how I think about this.
dan-balcauski (09:20):
That's fascinating.
And I think, well, I maybe havea little controversial, fiery
debate.
I think it does matter.
At least let me give you, I cangive you a concrete example of
where it might matter.
I definitely am a fan of moreproduct folks taking CEO roles
for technology companies.
I think there's a strong trackrecord of success of product
(09:43):
management leaders and CEOroles.
We're You know, let me name adepartment that you, I don't
think you mentioned in your,when you were rattling off
departments there, which islike, I've seen a lot of CFOs
become CEOs and where I thinkthat can maybe rub against the
grain of a core assets of atechnology company is where the
(10:06):
CFO, very spreadsheet driven,very much of, well, I have.
People those people theengineers are interchangeable
between products and we knowfrom being product managers or,
working in code bases, if, maybeyou've acquired several
different companies, you can'tjust on day one, this week I'm
(10:27):
working on this product and thiscode base with this architecture
and these legacy, constraintsand this language.
And then, next week I'm workingon this and expect to have full
sort of transparency.
So.
I think that, I think everyonecomes with bias every, wherever
you were born from, like,whether you came up through the
marketing ranks or the salesranks or the finance ranks or
the product ranks you're goingto have a certain sort of
worldview.
(10:47):
And then that's going to be,magnified potentially at the
highest level.
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (10:50):
I are agreeing on that point, right?
The discipline that you grew upin is going to define some of
the worldview that you formed.
And that's obvious.
You can pretend like, Oh mygosh, I'm a product guy, but I'm
going to be a sales minded CEO.
It's not easy, right?
You're going to be influenced bythe domain that you grew up in.
But what makes you a goodleader, at least in my opinion,
(11:12):
is like how much you can keepthe bias at check.
Right?
Here's an example of a CFO.
If a CFO became a CEO.
And his or her process is alwaysabout, let me get the two
columns in the cell to add up inExcel.
Then, of course, you're going tobe, viewed like that.
If a product person becomes aCEO and I look at everything as,
well, this feature, when can weship it?
How much market adoption I candrive?
(11:34):
That's going to, drive a certainbehavior and and frustration in
the company as well.
So I think, you've got toseparate out the maturity of
these discipline leaders that gothrough and get to this You know
running this company where youhave the perspective across
multiple disciplines.
I think that's a growth thing Idon't think that's necessarily
tied to one particulardiscipline or the other
dan-balcauski (11:55):
That's well, I completely agree.
I think we are we're 99 percentin agreement on that topic.
I do want to pivot over andlearn about more about Cin7 and
some of the scaling challengesthat you've seen kind of
throughout your career.
And also at Cin7, set thecontext for everyone's, can you
give the audience just a, what'sa 30 second elevator pitch on
Cin7 for those folks who aren'tfamiliar with the company?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (12:17):
Yeah, I mean if you obviously all of us
do shop online and buy stuffright who doesn't and
particularly since covideverybody's buying everywhere
and everything So what we dosince seven is like if you're a
product seller out there that'sselling goods Whether through
amazon or you have your owncommerce store with shopify Or
you have a retail location,you're selling to wholesalers.
We essentially power the sellingaspect of that, right?
(12:39):
From the point of like youprocuring goods, either you're
assembling, manufacturing, allthe way to distribution.
You're thinking about this interms of how you manage them in
the warehouse, how are youpurchasing, receiving, how
you're getting the supply chainworking the most efficient way.
That's what we do in a nutshell.
Like one of the visions thatwe've stayed out in SIN 7 is we
want to make selling as easy asbuying.
(13:00):
Buying has seen a lot of shiftover the last five years,
particularly since pandemic,right?
Online order, pick up in store,online order delivered to home,
social media apps, like you cannow buy goods from TikTok and
Insta and so on.
So the buying experience havegone through an amazing
transformation.
We are working and our platformis helping to see that same
transformation happen on theselling part of it.
(13:23):
You as a product seller, how doyou envision all of that?
How do you get the right stockin place?
And making sure you'refulfilling your growth
aspirations while deliveringvalue to your customers.
dan-balcauski (13:33):
So the Amazon experience or, different social
media channels.
It's funny.
Cause I was at a conferencebefore and I remember, yeah,
there was a, one of these largeindustrial, B2B companies and,
they were getting all thesecomplaints from their customers
of like, look, I go on Amazonand I click, and I, I get
whatever I want and it's at mydoor in two days and every time
I go purchase from you guys,it's, I've You know, I've got to
(13:55):
talk to three salespeople and ittakes weeks to get what I want.
And so, yeah, I think there's a,look, I think a lot of those
companies, know that it's justtheir back ends weren't, aren't
supported weren't built in thatera where to match that customer
experience.
So look, every company faces,challenges along the way.
And I know you've only been inthe CEO seat for a short time
(14:16):
now.
So, so maybe if not in your timein that role maybe, going back
as your time is in the chiefproduct officer seat, but, are
there specific challenges thathave been memorable to you that,
you faced it since seven duringyour growth?
And tell us a little about it,like, and what was the
situation?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (14:32):
Yeah.
I mean, again, every companygoes through a set of
challenges.
If somebody said, no, we've goteverything figured out, run
away.
And a lot of times, right, Ithink people think about
challenges as in, oh my gosh,this is something that, we need
to go figure out.
It's a strategic disaster.
Usually that's not what it is.
Usually it's a lot of theseinefficiencies or challenges
that are small in size that youneed to tackle on a day, day in
(14:56):
and day out, week in and weekout.
If you look at Cin7, you know,Cin7 had tremendous growth over
the last several years,particularly, with post
pandemic.
We were one of the companiesthat were poised to take
advantage of that explosivegrowth in the commerce industry.
And the team did a fantastic jobof being being ready and
available.
If you think about thechallenges and the opportunities
(15:17):
that we have seen, one,continuing to help our
customers.
Like, the thing that we havegone through and shifted is
like, what is the purpose ofwhat we do at Cin7?
This is not about inventorymanagement, right?
That's a means to an end.
What we offer is not inventorymanagement.
What we offer is helping ourbrands become household brands.
How do we take companies thatare like coming in, have an idea
(15:38):
to go sell, I don't know, newwater bottle, right?
Who needs another water bottle?
But I guess, let's use that asan example, right?
I'm, I've got this idea.
I'm going to go build this newwater bottle.
I'm launching, I'm shipping itfrom my garage.
I'm starting to see sometraction.
I'm going to now set up a,BigCommerce store or a
WooCommerce store or a Shopifystore.
Now, what do I do, right?
How do I manage the inventory?
(15:59):
How do I keep track of where thecustomers are coming from?
How many they're buying?
Can I fulfill them in thetimeframe that I've committed
to?
That's when Cin7 comes intoplay, where they're using the
platform to be able to keep upwith the business demand while
staying in, sane.
And that's the value propositionwe offer.
So our purpose, and if you lookat a lot of our customer story,
their purpose is beyond just theproduct that they're selling.
(16:21):
It's driven by the value thatthey're adding to the, it's
based on some reflection ofstuff with the family or the
community at large or thestruggle that they've gone
through.
We have seen so many amazingproducts.
That are driven off of the needfrom the community.
Like we have a company thatactually sells custom seats that
are used in senior living andmedical facilities.
(16:41):
That started from, the founderhaving an, having a passion in
that area and have a familymember that needed help.
We have companies that sellproducts for climbers, rock
mountain climbers, rockclimbers.
So comes from two founders thatare super, super passionate
about this.
I can keep going on and on.
Our customer's purpose is beyondjust the product that they're
selling.
And we take that purpose prettyseriously when we think about
(17:03):
our product opportunity and howwe invest in our product as
well.
It's not just about making sureI've got five inventory coming
in.
I've sold three.
That means I have two in theshelf.
That's easy math.
Anybody can do it, right?
The point is, are we helping ourcustomers go beyond what they
expect from an inventory managersystem and truly see us as a
partner in this, not just asoftware vendor.
(17:23):
And that's a constant battle.
And so that's something that weare overcoming with our vision,
overcoming with how we thinkabout not just from a product
standpoint, but also how we goto market, how we support our
partners and customers, how wedo onboarding, training, et
cetera,
dan-balcauski (17:38):
got it.
So the very clear customer focusI could tell you used to be a
product'cause very clearlyidentified help.
Your purpose is to help thecustomer get where they need to
go.
Love that.
Exclamation point for alllistening.
So that makes sense.
I'm curious, you did just kindof list a few things at the end
there.
(17:59):
Like, knowing that's kind ofwhat success, what the vision or
what success looks like for you.
Where, I guess, where was itthat you didn't feel that sort
of Cin7 was sort of set up toreally make that happen?
Was it sort of, investments thatyou guys had to make in a
product experience?
I know you mentioned your sortof maybe pricing times pricing
(18:19):
and value, it's like, yeah, we,this is what we say we're doing,
but our pricing is priced, onbasic, math, right?
Like, so it doesn't align.
Or was it the talent that youhad to get on board?
What, what did you see as thesort of the primary challenge
to, Sort of aligning those twothings.
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (18:33):
I want to say yes to that question.
It's, I mean, Dan, I'm not even,I'm not even, being fictitious
yet.
It is all of the above, believeit or not, right?
And this is one of the thingswhere it's, like I said before,
it's never one thing.
There's a lot of little thingsand we can continue to improve.
And I, I shared this, we justhosted our partner summit in
Denver two weeks ago.
(18:53):
Okay.
Where we brought in amazingenergy.
The term that everybody usedabout the event is that it's a
reunion.
It's a re, that's the term Iheard internally as well as
externally.
They all feel like this is acommunity that they have
connection beyond just the jobthat they're doing, right?
The reason I'm bringing that upin my keynote, I was like
reflecting on what do I want tosay at the end of my keynote?
(19:14):
Like, I want to present thismotivational, where do we go
from here, right?
I was like, oh, well, should Ijust go tell them, oh my gosh,
next year we're going to be like100 percent growth and we're
going to run this campaign andman, we're going to add more
customers.
I was like, no, that's, ofcourse I can say all of that,
but then what is that, that Iwant them to take away?
So I went back to a message thatI landed with the team when I
first took over as a CEO ofCin7.
(19:36):
Which is based off of this Nikead copy that talks about there's
no finish line.
I don't know if you have seenit.
It's probably 10, 15, 20, 20years old.
Look it up in Google and I'msure your audience will find it
interesting as well.
In the point of that ad is that,Nike sells products to obviously
common man, right?
Not all folks that buy Nikeshoes are like Michael Jordan or
(19:57):
LeBron James.
So, but in the race of life,you're not running to a finish
line.
You're not running a hundredmeters.
You're not running a marathon.
You're not running a 1500meters.
You're running, right?
But that's not the point that Iwas pivoting on which is like at
the end of that copy Which is anad that they ran I think in
newspapers and so on It talksabout this particular line that
says it's easy to beat thecompetition.
(20:19):
It's hard to beat yourselvesOkay, so that's something that
I've stuck with me the veryfirst time that I saw you
probably I don't know 10 15years ago So one of the things
that I asked the team, and whichis something that I carry very
close to my heart, I don'tsucceed in it every single day,
but I try to do what I did todaybetter tomorrow.
I try to do what I did tomorrowbetter the day after.
(20:41):
That's something that Iconstantly work on.
Not that we all succeed everysingle day, not that you can
succeed on it every single day,but that's the attitude.
So I asked the team to reflecton this and say, we want Cin7 to
be the best company.
And I said, how would I knowwhether we are the best company?
Would my mom call me and say,Ajay, you are the best company
CEO now?
Right?
Best could be anything.
I said, you know what's best?
If each of you wake up everymorning and say, I'm going to do
(21:04):
what I did yesterday bettertoday, trust me, we're going to
be it.
We're going to have a lot ofsuccess and we're going to have
a lot of fun doing it as well.
I left that same message to mypartner ecosystem and say, guys,
you're all part of thisecosystem.
Are you all willing to take thatextra pledge and say, yes, I am
going to commit to doing what Idid today better tomorrow, then
I think we'll be in a muchbetter place.
So to me, the reason I'mbringing that up in this context
(21:26):
of this question is like, thereare opportunities for us in
every single area.
Support, onboarding, how we dotraining, how we did pricing,
how we did product featureprioritization, right?
How we did engineering, how wedid quality, QA, like all the,
test coverage and unit testing.
And how are we using AI?
There's so much hype about AIright now and I'm more than
(21:47):
happy to talk about how we'rethinking about the approach.
Very proud of the approach we'retaking there, by the way.
No bias there.
All of that is super, superimportant, right?
You got to constantly thinkabout every discipline and say,
how can we get better?
And it's not just one magictransformation that happens.
It's the incremental progress.
Every single day work at itbefore you know it.
(22:08):
You look back in a year and golike, shit, we've done so many
amazing things.
dan-balcauski (22:11):
Yeah, there's, I'm sure there's no end to the
list of problems that you'vesolved that are continuing to
try to solve.
You did, you threw out somereally good breadcrumbs there.
And I think, so, an area wheremaybe the finish line, if it
exists at all, is quite blurryfor folks is this area of AI.
And I am curious about yourperspective.
(22:31):
I guess, is there What's acontrarian view you hold about
AI's role in software companies?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (22:39):
Yeah, I don't know if it's a contrarian
view.
I think it's a, it's morepragmatic view, if I may say so.
I think the notion of this rightnow, if you think about AI, like
who hasn't heard about it?
Everybody.
And there's AI in our life,before we even, we knew it as
AI, right?
Some of the value of AI isactually getting lost in the
noise because everybody want it.
(22:59):
Everybody want to say like, Hey,we are an AI company and our
product is powered by AI.
I was in San Francisco a coupleof weeks back.
There's not like a mile you candrive without seeing an AI ad in
a billboard, right?
I mean, that illustrates thepoint because everybody, it's a
gold rush.
The new gold rush is the AIrush, right?
Everybody wants in.
And it's not necessarily a badthing.
(23:20):
The reason why that rush ishappening is there is gold.
There is value in this AI thing.
There's amazing investment thathas gone in.
That we have seen moreinnovation in the last couple of
years than the prior probably adecade or so, particularly with
generative AI, the progress thatwe've seen with the, large
language models.
So for us at Cin7, the way wethink about this is we
monitored, or we call this termcalled AI with Purpose.
(23:43):
Going back to the purposecomment I made, we don't want to
get carried away, again, I'vecommitted that sin before, we're
shiny blue objects, tech for thesake of tech, so I'm not
dan-balcauski (23:54):
all guilty.
We're all
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (23:55):
we're all guilty we're all guilty sinners,
right?
But the purpose of this is likeunderstanding what AI can help
us.
So the way we are thinking aboutthis is, like I said, AI with
purpose.
What does it mean is two things.
One, forget about AI in theproduct.
We are challenging ourselveswithin the company to say, How
can AI help my do my job better?
It doesn't matter what role youplay.
You're a support specialist,you're an onboarding specialist,
(24:16):
you're a product manager, you'rea business analyst, you are a
software developer.
You know you're a sales SDR, youare an ae.
I can keep going on and on eachof those disciplines, we are
consciously investing in toolsand capabilities that actually
offers us new workflows, new usecases that would not have been
possible.
I'll tell you one data set thatthe team reviewed with me last
(24:37):
night.
It's like we're using Zendesk asour support system, right?
We just rolled it out across allof our products and so on.
And we have now used the ZendeskAI feature where you can
actually train the AI with ourknowledge based articles and our
content and so on.
Now it's starting to providematerially impactful deflection,
meaning when a customer engageswith us on a chat, we are now
(24:59):
seeing people that have engagedwith us, more than 50 percent of
those chats don't turn intosupport tickets.
They get the answer.
Which is phenomenal, right?
The reason why it's phenomenalis not because we are getting
the customers talking to thechat.
It's phenomenal because we canactually have really talented
people, rather than answeringyour one on one questions, they
can go focus on solving thingsthat the AI chat cannot solve
(25:20):
for you, right?
So there's an opportunity costhere in terms of the time used
and where we use their time.
So that's one aspect.
We are constantly challengingourselves to say, is there AI
tool, AI power tool capabilitythat we can use internally to
fundamentally rethink how weinnovate and how we work?
The second aspect is how wethink about AI within our
(25:42):
product.
This is where we are being verygrounded, if I may say so, in
understanding the use cases.
What matters for our customers?
In fact, we went and acquiredthis company called Inventoro in
May.
They do demand forecasting.
They built their own.
A deep learning model reallyfascinating team with the great
IP.
We had a lot of sharedcustomers, so we acquired them.
(26:03):
Now we're embedding that intothe product.
A great example of how that usecase is valid.
I was talking to a customeryesterday called the Coconut
Cult.
I don't know if you've heard ofthem.
Great branding.
They make probiotic yogurt.
Really popular.
Okay, see this is the value addservice I provide as a CEO.
I plug my customers products.
And and fascinating.
One of the things they weretalking to me about is like how
(26:25):
forecasting is an area that theyneed to get better and they want
to continue to invest in thatarea.
Great fit for using beyond whatthey're using in SIN 7 with this
new inventory product.
What it can tell them what theirstock out situation is going to
be, how much overstock that theyhave.
So they can continue to run thebusiness more efficiently and
continue to grow the business.
(26:46):
For us, that's what the secondpiece is, which is being
grounded on the use cases on howwe can offer solution that adds
meaningful value that we canonly offer with the AI that we
cannot do it otherwise.
If I can do it with a simplestatistical math, I should be
able to do that, right?
I shouldn't bring the AI intothe mix.
The reason why AI is valuable inthis case is actually machine
(27:07):
learning more than AI.
But to be able to grog all thedata, sales, history and
customer behavior and externalevents to come back and do some
prediction on what your volumeforecast is going to be, that's
super hard to do.
Yeah, sure.
You can build a model inspreadsheet and try to grind it,
but that's very labor intensive.
And this one is automatic.
It's fast.
(27:27):
You can get that insights and gomake business decisions.
So there are several exampleslike that I can talk to you
today, Dan, but that's theapproach we're taking.
One, AI to make how we do thingsbetter and then AI to empower
use cases within the product.
dan-balcauski (27:39):
Yeah, I love that.
So there was a focus onStreamlining internal
operations, giving more power toyour humans to go solve problems
that matter to your customers.
And then two how do youintegrate machine learning AI
writ large, not necessarilyLLMs, because I'm sure in your
world, especially there's a lotof what we used to refer to as
(28:00):
just AI, right?
Statistical, like underlyingmodels yeah.
Where the, where statistics endsand AI begins is always a bit of
a judgment call.
But so those are both beautiful,I guess.
A lot of CEOs are, having tofend off requests from the board
of what is your, AI approach?
What is your, what are you doingin that space?
(28:21):
And, that's not a new question.
They've probably been asking itfor at least the last six,
eight, maybe more quarters atthis point.
Are there any sort of lessonsthat you've learned about, like,
Especially as you look towardswhere you've applied it in the
product side of things in termsof how you've, the lessons
you've learned in terms of howyou evaluate sort of the
(28:42):
maturity, the capability, theability to sort of move forward.
Because I think a lot ofcompanies are still stuck in
this.
I've been asked to sort of showprogress, but then I'm sort of
stuck in this messy middle whereit's good enough for a demo, but
maybe not good enough forprimetime.
Have you run into things likethat?
Are there lessons that you'velearned in that area?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (29:01):
Of course.
I mean, we all do, right?
I mean, that's part of the, Iguess, part for the course, like
we, so one of the first thingsthat we did in AI, I mean, you
talked about generative or LLM,generative AI.
I mean, we have a lot of data,right?
The supply chain industry as awhole.
I always use this term, we aredata rich, insights poor, right?
And how do we become moreinsights driven?
Because data is one thing andpeople say data is the moat.
(29:23):
Right.
If data is the moat, theinsights, it's the water, let's
you keep every elements out ofthe danger, I guess.
But the point there is when wethink about this new technology,
AI is now the topic, but any newtechnology comes in, we need to
start playing with it, right?
There's no way you can just readabout it and then make opinions,
right?
So we did that.
We did that with GenAI.
(29:43):
We said, what is the use casethat we can automate?
We were actually one of thefirst companies to do it, where
we literally add this usingAzure OpenAI to be able to
generate amazing productdescriptions with just a couple
of bullets.
A lot of our customers don'thave a marketing team, right?
They don't have likecopywriters.
And if you look at the productdescription, it's very matter of
(30:04):
fact.
And probably that's what I woulddo if I was asked to write a
product copy, right?
But AI can do this very well,particularly, chat GPT, can
really do this extremely well.
So we put that out as a way ofus trying to get our feet wet
and starting to explore whatdoes that look like.
We thought it'd be a nice fancydemo to your point, right?
And it was like a lot of our AEswere like, Ajay, that's so cool,
(30:26):
man.
Our prospects are always like,Ooh, this is freaking awesome,
right?
So it's good to get theattention.
It's a nice shiny blue object,but is it really useful?
And we have now hundreds ofcustomers using it, right, which
is fun in itself.
But the point of that is not somuch that particular
implementation of it, it's usunderstanding how we can apply
(30:47):
AI to offer something within theproduct at the scale that we
need to do.
So that taught us a lot abouthow we think about pricing of
that feature, how we think aboutrolling out the feature.
We actually did an early adopterprogram there where we recruited
about We just did this inproduct recruitment for
customers that want to,participate in this.
We got like 50 customers in likematter of hours.
(31:08):
And we said, that's it.
We're going to stop it.
Take the 50 customers, put themthrough this journey and see how
they're using this and what thefeedback is.
Work out the kinks before weroll it out.
So that was a one good learningthat came out of that.
Now we're using that model witha lot of the new feature
releases and so on.
And that's what we're extendinginto a lot of our new AI
features.
We're going to do that with thisbig release that's coming up.
(31:28):
With our Inventora acquisitionwe're going to do the same
approach.
Get some early adopters testingit out and continue to push
forward.
Blockchain.
dan-balcauski (31:40):
the use case.
I see way too many companiestaking the path of our brethren
in the web three crypto spacewho came out and said, Oh, now
our product with AI and all thecustomers are like now with
blockchain.
And everyone's like why do Icare?
But, having very concrete, Usecases that drive it forward
versus just, Hey, you get our itseems like the entire design
(32:03):
world, it only has this onesymbol for the AI button, the
little magic stars as
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (32:07):
pretty cool, isn't it?
dan-balcauski (32:10):
It's ma, it's the magic button.
It's magic button.
Well, you threw out some catnipin there where you were saying
you learned some lessons aroundeven pricing that those
capabilities what lead usthrough a little bit of context
around what the situation wasthere and how you approach that
top part of the
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (32:27):
Yeah, I mean, specific to that was
pretty trivial pricing learning,but generally when you think
about pricing, right, the, Imean, I've done fair share of
pricing work myself and And alot of times you end up modeling
and modeling at the end of theday It's you know, it's the
planning and not the plan inthat case, right?
It's making sure you're thinkingabout all the different
variables and at the end of theday It's you know It's what the
(32:47):
customers are willing to pay andthe market is going to tell you
whether you priced it right ornot So to me, I think you've got
to keep a very, you got to bepretty pragmatic about any
pricing project and theprinciple that I always use and
the learning that we got withthat GenAI effort is first we
thought we'll just price itbased on number of product
descriptions and so on.
We looked at the cost equationand tried to keep a margin.
So whatever it's costing us froma compute and data perspective,
(33:12):
we were over complicating it,right?
Because when you did all ofthat, then we need to make it
based on number of tokens andthis and that.
Then how do I explain to you?
If Dan, you put up your hand andsay, well, I have a thousand
products guys, how much does itcost?
Well, a thousand products.
About how many words would youwrite in description?
Like what the frick, seriously.
So if you are, if you have tohave that level of conversation
in pricing, might as you've lostit already.
(33:34):
So one of the key tenets of anypricing discussion is like, can
we keep it simple and stupid?
Right?
Where people just understand itand then they go.
So that's something that we havedone.
We, if you look at our, sinceseven new core pricing
architecture that we launchedlast year.
We introduced the concept ofconsumption based pricing, so
it's not just one pricing forall.
There's obviously base levelmodules that they come in, or
(33:55):
the standard editions, and thenyou can add modules based on
your business needs, whether youwant manufacturing, warehouse
management, POS, B to B, etc.
And then we also have aconsumption based on your sales
order volumes.
The more you grow, we get a youpay more for the value that
you're getting from the product,which I think makes total sense.
So, those are the type of stuffwe get it, we learn it, we put
(34:15):
it in market, and then don't tryto overreact to market reaction
in the first 30, 60, 90 days.
It takes some time.
You got to let it marinate andstart understanding the signals
because sales team, nobody likeschange and particularly nobody
likes pricing changes, so youdon't want to react to every
single feedback.
Oh my God, this customer saidthe consumption pricing is too
high.
(34:36):
Well, if you go keep changingthat, you'll end up creating a
Frankenstein where it will nevermake sense for anybody.
Once you have a conviction onthe model that you've built, you
go let it sit in the market,understand, watch for
escalations, don't go to sleep,keep an eye on it, but don't
react to every noise coming.
Just listen, and after about 90days, you got enough patent
there to say, okay, we got to dosome course corrections here, or
(34:57):
no, what we did is perfectlyfine and we can counter some of
the, objections throughpromotions and campaigns and
discounts.
dan-balcauski (35:04):
I absolutely love that whole answer you gave, and
I could talk to you for a wholeother hour about that topic
alone.
I think one thing that I want topoint out for listeners is I've
seen so many companies doexactly the mistake that, get
trapped in that first Iterationthat you mentioned, which is the
cost coming in on a marginalvariable cost basis is very
(35:25):
concrete.
Therefore I need to match thatto maintain a margin percentage,
the spreadsheet math equals, andthen you do, end up in this
credit slash token based system,which just, it's like pouring
sand in your go to marketengine.
It's just like now every salesconversation has to, is this
belabored.
(35:45):
Conversation about your productarchitecture rather than the
customer's problem, right?
It goes exactly against thegrain you were you're painting
before, right?
And so I think I see so manycompanies get stuck in that of
like, well, we got to make it upAnd so we're gonna charge this,
you know with we don't want youknow Usage to get out of
control.
So we got to have some limitthat we talked to him about.
And it just I believe you guysdid very well in, in that that
(36:08):
approach, we do have to startwrapping up.
I, there's a whole bunch oftopics we didn't even get a
chance to get to, but I do wantto be respectful of your, and
the audience time wrap it upwith a couple rapid fire
questions.
You ready?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (36:20):
Yes, sir.
dan-balcauski (36:21):
What drives you to come to work every day?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (36:24):
Oh my gosh.
I mean, I talked about thisearly on, right?
It's the, it's our customer'spurpose, right?
I spend a lot of time talking toour customers and a lot of our
customers at SMB, we haveorganizations that are, self
funded, bootstrapped, right?
That they have a passion forgoing and building the the next
next best beverage, right?
We have a lot of beveragecompanies.
Alcoholic and non alcoholic.
(36:45):
We have customers that areselling cosmetics, really big
brands, celebrity brands, and soon.
So we got a range of customersfrom self funded to, VC backed
to celebrity funded and so on.
And customers that have foundgreat market fit.
They're selling 50, 100 millionworth of businesses and
businesses that have gonethrough amazing growth.
One takeaway from all of thoseconversations, I probably met
(37:07):
with 60, 70 customers in thelast, 12 months.
And one consistent feedback,I've never heard any of them
talk about the doom and gloom.
Oh my gosh, macro this, macrothat, interest rate this.
No, that's not the conversationthey're having.
Of course, they're having thatstruggle too.
That every one of them isresilient.
Every one of them is predictingdouble digit growth, 2x growth,
(37:27):
3x growth.
I spoke to a customer just, acouple of weeks back.
I've seen 14x growth in the lastyear.
Unbelievable, right?
We have a, I mean, I can giveyou examples and examples of
customers that come in at a veryearly stage and go on.
To me, that's what drives ourpurpose, right?
And what we do, and that's whatgets me super, super excited
about, particularly the problemthat we are solving for.
(37:49):
And and the team is amazing.
I've got, like I said, I've madea couple of jokes about my kids
and family.
I mean, I spent a lot of timetalking to them about business
challenges and so on, and theymotivate me.
I love what I do.
I tell my board this actually inall seriousness, I'll do this
job without a compensation.
The fact that I'm gettingcompensated is a bonus.
dan-balcauski (38:09):
Well, well, make sure your board members don't
don't get a hold of thispodcast.
No, that's awesome.
I'm really glad to hear that.
We all would love to have thattype of career.
You're a very lucky man in thatregard.
Look, if you could give your ifI can give you a billboard and
you could put anything on it forother B to B SaaS CEOs trying to
scale their companies, whatwould it say?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (38:27):
Yeah, I mean, it's going to sound a
little bit of a, a cliche, butwe already talked about this.
It's customer first, right?
I mean, just really stay honestto that, right?
It's easier said than done.
I remember reading a quote, Ithink it was from Robert Half.
It said that when you putcustomer first, they last,
right?
It has a nice play on wordthere, but it's super, super
like, you got to every decisionyou make, think about, are we
(38:51):
doing the right thing?
Just think about your, fromtheir perspective.
I think that's super important.
If I have a, a message at aplatform where we need to go
tell the story, I thinkindependent of what business you
are in, you'll never be wrong bytaking that approach.
dan-balcauski (39:05):
Customer first.
Love it.
Ajoy, this has been fantastic.
If listeners want to learn moreabout SID 7 or you anywhere on
the worldwide webs how can theydo that?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (39:19):
Yeah, I mean, Cin7.
com is our company website, butof course you can Google my name
or Cin7 or our customers.
I mean, we have amazing contentout there, but Cin7.
com is a good place to start.
dan-balcauski (39:29):
Awesome.
Well, I will put those links inthe show notes for listeners.
That wraps up this episode ofSaaS Scaling Secrets.
Thank you to Ajoy for sharinghis journey insights and
valuable tips for our listeners.
If you found this conversationas enlightening as I did,
remember, subscribe so you don'tmiss out on future episodes.
Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets, the podcast
that dives in the trenches withthe leaders of the best scale up
B2B SaaS companies.
I'm your host, Dan Balcauski,founder of Product Tranquility.
Today, I have the privilege ofinterviewing Ajoy
Krishnamoorthy.
Ajoy is the CEO of Cin7, aleading provider of inventory
and order management software.
With over two decades ofexperience in the tech industry,
Ajoy has navigated roles fromengineering to product
(00:40):
management and executiveleadership, leaving his mark on
companies like Microsoft,Acumatica, and taking the helm
at Cin7.
Let's dive in.
Welcome, Ajoy, to SaaS ScalingSecrets.
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (00:51):
Awesome.
Great to be here, Dan.
Thanks for having me.
I'm excited about theconversation today.
dan-balcauski (00:56):
I am as well very excited to get a chance to sit
down after a long summer.
Look, we all have moments in ourlives that really sort of shift
our perspective, our mindset,our worldview.
I sometimes refer to this asyour superhero transformation
moment.
What for you was your, I'm PeterParker, normal high school kid.
(01:18):
I get bit by a radioactivespider, went to sleep, woke up
and everything is differentmoment.
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (01:25):
Yeah, so this one day I was walking in my
campus and lightning strikes me.
No, I'm kidding.
dan-balcauski (01:33):
I it happens.
I know.
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (01:36):
you there.
No, actually for me, I mean, youtalked about having an
engineering and product and soon.
I mean, I grew up writing a lotof code and I did that when I
was in school and so on.
From a, if you reflect, juststep back and look at the
overall career progression andso on.
For me, I think the time I spentin my graduate school, I
intentionally went and got myMBA and to me, I think that
(01:59):
opened up some of the aspectsthat I've never thought about in
my life, right?
In terms of the underpinnings ofthe business and how we think
about customers, how we thinkabout the numbers behind the
business.
The customer interactions.
And I have appreciation for alot of the problems now in a
different perspective than I hadbefore as an engineer, so to
speak.
So to me, I don't know if it'sthe, Peter Parker superhero
(02:22):
transition moment, but it wasdefinitely a, something that got
me out of my skin, so to speak.
What I felt comfortable talkingto a machine to feeling a lot
more comfortable talking topeople, articulating the pain
points and value propositionsand all that fun stuff that
comes with.
Explaining what you're workingon.
To me, that, that was a bigtrans, I guess, I don't know if
(02:44):
it's transformation, but big,transition phase for me from a
career standpoint.
dan-balcauski (02:49):
Yeah, I went through a very similar
transition from an engineeringworld into an MBA and then into
product management side.
So, definitely some key momentsduring business school.
I remember, I think one of themwas a, Decision Sciences, where
you're learning like, okay,well, you're the leader of a
company.
You got to decide whether, CEOof Intel, you got to decide
(03:09):
whether to spend 10 billion onbuilding a new fab.
How do you think of thatdecision?
And then learning about all thepsychological biases that come
into effect and how do we useanalytical methods to actually.
Sort of correct for those andunderstand them.
Was there a specific, any sortof specific class or teacher, or
maybe it was even interactionwith your your peer that was
(03:30):
particularly memorable in thattransformation for you?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (03:33):
Yeah.
I mean, I loved all of the casestudies we did.
It really grounded us onsomething that's meaningful.
These are not fictional casestudies.
These are actual companies thatwe looked at.
and understood the good, thebad, the ugly.
And and there was one professorwho was actually working in
retirement fund at the time.
And he came and taught us someof the macroeconomics.
And I was always a big fan ofmacroeconomics.
(03:57):
I really want to have a careerin that, to be honest, back in
the day took on software becausethe money seemed a lot more
easier to get to, when you wereyoung.
But Macroeconomics was an areaof passion.
In fact, people joke about likewhen you take classes like that,
when are you ever going to useit, right?
There was one class that I tookaround behavioral economics.
Okay.
I was actually using somethingfrom that class today in a
(04:19):
meeting that we had aroundpricing strategy for one of the
new module that we're going toput into market.
So, sometimes, it's the thingsthat you take for granted.
You go like, yeah, I'm nevergoing to use it.
But it just cements, certainbeliefs and ideas that continues
to come back to you, right?
You're constantly thinking abouthow you apply them when you're
not actively going and pursuinga book and say, let me open up
(04:40):
page 23 and look at this model.
That's not how decisions aremade, right?
You're constantly thinking aboutstuff on the go.
So to your question, yeah, it'sthe professor, that was running
a, he was essentially investmentmanager for the retirement fund.
He was amazing, like the stuffthat he brought to the classroom
with his real world experienceabout making investment
decisions, tying that into howwe think about the macro
(05:01):
climate, what happens when, Imean, it's a hot topic now with
the interest rates and so on.
How do we think about adjustingthe interest rates?
What does it mean to the globaleconomy and this and that?
It was super fascinating to me.
dan-balcauski (05:13):
Yeah, I love the, well the macroeconomics always
good for helping you at the pubto debate what's going to happen
in the stock market and theglobal economy, if nothing else.
And big fan of behavioraleconomics myself, I've got over
on the bookshelf RichardThaler's, Misbehaving and yes,
it comes into people's minds.
Practice a lot, my world.
You dropped a bunch of nuggetsthere about the good, the bad,
(05:33):
the ugly and case studies, andthis is SaaS Scaling Secrets.
So we're going to get into someof the good, bad, the ugly with
Cin7 as well as pricing, whichis near and dear to my heart, I
want to dive into those topics,but before we do that, I know
that before your promotion tothe top job at Cin7, you were in
the chief product officer roleand then, obviously had a career
in product leadership beforethen.
I'm curious.
(05:54):
Has moving into the CEO rolechanged your view on product
management in any way that'smaybe surprised you?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (06:04):
I don't think it's changed my view.
I've always, again now literallythis last weekend, there is this
big around this founder's modethat's been floating around.
I'm sure you've caught that too.
And this is actually a referenceto uh, Airbnb founder
Branschewski's talk at the YCclass and Paul Graham wrote this
post about being in this foundermode.
(06:26):
For me, I personally thoughtabout operating, doing, I don't
think that was the moniker thatwe used.
I always say, when people askme, what kind of leader are you?
I'm a practitioner, not apreacher, right?
That's the term that I've alwaysused, right?
I like to do things.
I like to be in the know, not somuch in the, for being a
micromanaging, which I'm suresome people took it that.
(06:48):
But that's how I learned, likeI'm not a, I'm not a textbook
learner.
I don't just go pick up a bookand read and go like, I got
this.
No, I have to practice things.
My learning comes from me justtinkering with things.
Like if I don't tinker withthings, I forget it, right?
So that drove me to be always bein the weeds, so to speak,
understanding things and how itworks and what's working, what's
(07:10):
not working.
I think that perspective helpedme a lot in the product role
because, as a product person,you've got to understand the
good and the bad and what's theprocess, what's the, progress
we're making with productinvestments.
To me, I think, if anything, ithelps me a lot to play my role
as a CEO with a lot ofcredibility, right?
My employees understand whereI'm coming from because when I
(07:32):
make some statements and asksand so on, they You know, they
know for the most part I knowwhat I'm talking about.
Not always, but for the mostpart.
My kids might disagree, butthat's besides the point.
And same thing when I'm talkingto customers.
I spend a lot of time talking toour customers, which is
something that I love doing.
And and they immediatelyunderstand and recognize I can
(07:52):
talk beyond what the team hasbriefed me on.
And I think that's superimportant reflection for me.
That's something that I'veconsidered very fortunate being
in that path, going from being aproduct person into the CEO
role, but at the end of the day,right, irrespective of the title
and the role, because I rememberhaving a conversation, Dan,
similar to this in anotherpodcast, they asked me, is there
(08:12):
a benefit of a product leadergoing into the CEO role versus a
sales leader going into a CEOrole?
I think it's overstated, to behonest.
I know people go, Oh my gosh,the engineer now is a CEO.
That's the best thing.
Oh, product guy is a CEO.
That's the best thing.
I don't think it matters.
At the end of the day, a goodleader is a good leader.
I don't think, you being a goodsalesperson necessarily makes
(08:35):
you a CEO.
You being a good product personnecessarily makes you a good
CEO.
I always hold certain principlesin life.
This whole, practice, practicingversus preaching.
I always think about thingslike, things that are always
going to go wrong, right?
We're dealing with complexsituations and so on.
There's always some escalationsor the other.
I think about things like, it's10 percent what happened, 90
(08:55):
percent how you react to it andstuff like that people attach to
you, not when you say it, butwhen you practice it.
You say it, people go, yeah,whatever, roll their eyes and
walk away.
Yeah, it sounds good on paper,but then are you willing to live
it?
When you get into a situation asa leader, irrespective of what
role you play, you can be a GM,you can be a VP, you can be a
CEO, product guy, sales guy,marketing, doesn't matter.
(09:17):
That's how I think about this.
dan-balcauski (09:20):
That's fascinating.
And I think, well, I maybe havea little controversial, fiery
debate.
I think it does matter.
At least let me give you, I cangive you a concrete example of
where it might matter.
I definitely am a fan of moreproduct folks taking CEO roles
for technology companies.
I think there's a strong trackrecord of success of product
(09:43):
management leaders and CEOroles.
We're You know, let me name adepartment that you, I don't
think you mentioned in your,when you were rattling off
departments there, which islike, I've seen a lot of CFOs
become CEOs and where I thinkthat can maybe rub against the
grain of a core assets of atechnology company is where the
(10:06):
CFO, very spreadsheet driven,very much of, well, I have.
People those people theengineers are interchangeable
between products and we knowfrom being product managers or,
working in code bases, if, maybeyou've acquired several
different companies, you can'tjust on day one, this week I'm
(10:27):
working on this product and thiscode base with this architecture
and these legacy, constraintsand this language.
And then, next week I'm workingon this and expect to have full
sort of transparency.
So.
I think that, I think everyonecomes with bias every, wherever
you were born from, like,whether you came up through the
marketing ranks or the salesranks or the finance ranks or
the product ranks you're goingto have a certain sort of
worldview.
(10:47):
And then that's going to be,magnified potentially at the
highest level.
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (10:50):
I are agreeing on that point, right?
The discipline that you grew upin is going to define some of
the worldview that you formed.
And that's obvious.
You can pretend like, Oh mygosh, I'm a product guy, but I'm
going to be a sales minded CEO.
It's not easy, right?
You're going to be influenced bythe domain that you grew up in.
But what makes you a goodleader, at least in my opinion,
(11:12):
is like how much you can keepthe bias at check.
Right?
Here's an example of a CFO.
If a CFO became a CEO.
And his or her process is alwaysabout, let me get the two
columns in the cell to add up inExcel.
Then, of course, you're going tobe, viewed like that.
If a product person becomes aCEO and I look at everything as,
well, this feature, when can weship it?
How much market adoption I candrive?
(11:34):
That's going to, drive a certainbehavior and and frustration in
the company as well.
So I think, you've got toseparate out the maturity of
these discipline leaders that gothrough and get to this You know
running this company where youhave the perspective across
multiple disciplines.
I think that's a growth thing Idon't think that's necessarily
tied to one particulardiscipline or the other
dan-balcauski (11:55):
That's well, I completely agree.
I think we are we're 99 percentin agreement on that topic.
I do want to pivot over andlearn about more about Cin7 and
some of the scaling challengesthat you've seen kind of
throughout your career.
And also at Cin7, set thecontext for everyone's, can you
give the audience just a, what'sa 30 second elevator pitch on
Cin7 for those folks who aren'tfamiliar with the company?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (12:17):
Yeah, I mean if you obviously all of us
do shop online and buy stuffright who doesn't and
particularly since covideverybody's buying everywhere
and everything So what we dosince seven is like if you're a
product seller out there that'sselling goods Whether through
amazon or you have your owncommerce store with shopify Or
you have a retail location,you're selling to wholesalers.
We essentially power the sellingaspect of that, right?
(12:39):
From the point of like youprocuring goods, either you're
assembling, manufacturing, allthe way to distribution.
You're thinking about this interms of how you manage them in
the warehouse, how are youpurchasing, receiving, how
you're getting the supply chainworking the most efficient way.
That's what we do in a nutshell.
Like one of the visions thatwe've stayed out in SIN 7 is we
want to make selling as easy asbuying.
(13:00):
Buying has seen a lot of shiftover the last five years,
particularly since pandemic,right?
Online order, pick up in store,online order delivered to home,
social media apps, like you cannow buy goods from TikTok and
Insta and so on.
So the buying experience havegone through an amazing
transformation.
We are working and our platformis helping to see that same
transformation happen on theselling part of it.
(13:23):
You as a product seller, how doyou envision all of that?
How do you get the right stockin place?
And making sure you'refulfilling your growth
aspirations while deliveringvalue to your customers.
dan-balcauski (13:33):
So the Amazon experience or, different social
media channels.
It's funny.
Cause I was at a conferencebefore and I remember, yeah,
there was a, one of these largeindustrial, B2B companies and,
they were getting all thesecomplaints from their customers
of like, look, I go on Amazonand I click, and I, I get
whatever I want and it's at mydoor in two days and every time
I go purchase from you guys,it's, I've You know, I've got to
(13:55):
talk to three salespeople and ittakes weeks to get what I want.
And so, yeah, I think there's a,look, I think a lot of those
companies, know that it's justtheir back ends weren't, aren't
supported weren't built in thatera where to match that customer
experience.
So look, every company faces,challenges along the way.
And I know you've only been inthe CEO seat for a short time
(14:16):
now.
So, so maybe if not in your timein that role maybe, going back
as your time is in the chiefproduct officer seat, but, are
there specific challenges thathave been memorable to you that,
you faced it since seven duringyour growth?
And tell us a little about it,like, and what was the
situation?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (14:32):
Yeah.
I mean, again, every companygoes through a set of
challenges.
If somebody said, no, we've goteverything figured out, run
away.
And a lot of times, right, Ithink people think about
challenges as in, oh my gosh,this is something that, we need
to go figure out.
It's a strategic disaster.
Usually that's not what it is.
Usually it's a lot of theseinefficiencies or challenges
that are small in size that youneed to tackle on a day, day in
(14:56):
and day out, week in and weekout.
If you look at Cin7, you know,Cin7 had tremendous growth over
the last several years,particularly, with post
pandemic.
We were one of the companiesthat were poised to take
advantage of that explosivegrowth in the commerce industry.
And the team did a fantastic jobof being being ready and
available.
If you think about thechallenges and the opportunities
(15:17):
that we have seen, one,continuing to help our
customers.
Like, the thing that we havegone through and shifted is
like, what is the purpose ofwhat we do at Cin7?
This is not about inventorymanagement, right?
That's a means to an end.
What we offer is not inventorymanagement.
What we offer is helping ourbrands become household brands.
How do we take companies thatare like coming in, have an idea
(15:38):
to go sell, I don't know, newwater bottle, right?
Who needs another water bottle?
But I guess, let's use that asan example, right?
I'm, I've got this idea.
I'm going to go build this newwater bottle.
I'm launching, I'm shipping itfrom my garage.
I'm starting to see sometraction.
I'm going to now set up a,BigCommerce store or a
WooCommerce store or a Shopifystore.
Now, what do I do, right?
How do I manage the inventory?
(15:59):
How do I keep track of where thecustomers are coming from?
How many they're buying?
Can I fulfill them in thetimeframe that I've committed
to?
That's when Cin7 comes intoplay, where they're using the
platform to be able to keep upwith the business demand while
staying in, sane.
And that's the value propositionwe offer.
So our purpose, and if you lookat a lot of our customer story,
their purpose is beyond just theproduct that they're selling.
(16:21):
It's driven by the value thatthey're adding to the, it's
based on some reflection ofstuff with the family or the
community at large or thestruggle that they've gone
through.
We have seen so many amazingproducts.
That are driven off of the needfrom the community.
Like we have a company thatactually sells custom seats that
are used in senior living andmedical facilities.
(16:41):
That started from, the founderhaving an, having a passion in
that area and have a familymember that needed help.
We have companies that sellproducts for climbers, rock
mountain climbers, rockclimbers.
So comes from two founders thatare super, super passionate
about this.
I can keep going on and on.
Our customer's purpose is beyondjust the product that they're
selling.
And we take that purpose prettyseriously when we think about
(17:03):
our product opportunity and howwe invest in our product as
well.
It's not just about making sureI've got five inventory coming
in.
I've sold three.
That means I have two in theshelf.
That's easy math.
Anybody can do it, right?
The point is, are we helping ourcustomers go beyond what they
expect from an inventory managersystem and truly see us as a
partner in this, not just asoftware vendor.
(17:23):
And that's a constant battle.
And so that's something that weare overcoming with our vision,
overcoming with how we thinkabout not just from a product
standpoint, but also how we goto market, how we support our
partners and customers, how wedo onboarding, training, et
cetera,
dan-balcauski (17:38):
got it.
So the very clear customer focusI could tell you used to be a
product'cause very clearlyidentified help.
Your purpose is to help thecustomer get where they need to
go.
Love that.
Exclamation point for alllistening.
So that makes sense.
I'm curious, you did just kindof list a few things at the end
there.
(17:59):
Like, knowing that's kind ofwhat success, what the vision or
what success looks like for you.
Where, I guess, where was itthat you didn't feel that sort
of Cin7 was sort of set up toreally make that happen?
Was it sort of, investments thatyou guys had to make in a
product experience?
I know you mentioned your sortof maybe pricing times pricing
(18:19):
and value, it's like, yeah, we,this is what we say we're doing,
but our pricing is priced, onbasic, math, right?
Like, so it doesn't align.
Or was it the talent that youhad to get on board?
What, what did you see as thesort of the primary challenge
to, Sort of aligning those twothings.
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (18:33):
I want to say yes to that question.
It's, I mean, Dan, I'm not even,I'm not even, being fictitious
yet.
It is all of the above, believeit or not, right?
And this is one of the thingswhere it's, like I said before,
it's never one thing.
There's a lot of little thingsand we can continue to improve.
And I, I shared this, we justhosted our partner summit in
Denver two weeks ago.
(18:53):
Okay.
Where we brought in amazingenergy.
The term that everybody usedabout the event is that it's a
reunion.
It's a re, that's the term Iheard internally as well as
externally.
They all feel like this is acommunity that they have
connection beyond just the jobthat they're doing, right?
The reason I'm bringing that upin my keynote, I was like
reflecting on what do I want tosay at the end of my keynote?
(19:14):
Like, I want to present thismotivational, where do we go
from here, right?
I was like, oh, well, should Ijust go tell them, oh my gosh,
next year we're going to be like100 percent growth and we're
going to run this campaign andman, we're going to add more
customers.
I was like, no, that's, ofcourse I can say all of that,
but then what is that, that Iwant them to take away?
So I went back to a message thatI landed with the team when I
first took over as a CEO ofCin7.
(19:36):
Which is based off of this Nikead copy that talks about there's
no finish line.
I don't know if you have seenit.
It's probably 10, 15, 20, 20years old.
Look it up in Google and I'msure your audience will find it
interesting as well.
In the point of that ad is that,Nike sells products to obviously
common man, right?
Not all folks that buy Nikeshoes are like Michael Jordan or
(19:57):
LeBron James.
So, but in the race of life,you're not running to a finish
line.
You're not running a hundredmeters.
You're not running a marathon.
You're not running a 1500meters.
You're running, right?
But that's not the point that Iwas pivoting on which is like at
the end of that copy Which is anad that they ran I think in
newspapers and so on It talksabout this particular line that
says it's easy to beat thecompetition.
(20:19):
It's hard to beat yourselvesOkay, so that's something that
I've stuck with me the veryfirst time that I saw you
probably I don't know 10 15years ago So one of the things
that I asked the team, and whichis something that I carry very
close to my heart, I don'tsucceed in it every single day,
but I try to do what I did todaybetter tomorrow.
I try to do what I did tomorrowbetter the day after.
(20:41):
That's something that Iconstantly work on.
Not that we all succeed everysingle day, not that you can
succeed on it every single day,but that's the attitude.
So I asked the team to reflecton this and say, we want Cin7 to
be the best company.
And I said, how would I knowwhether we are the best company?
Would my mom call me and say,Ajay, you are the best company
CEO now?
Right?
Best could be anything.
I said, you know what's best?
If each of you wake up everymorning and say, I'm going to do
(21:04):
what I did yesterday bettertoday, trust me, we're going to
be it.
We're going to have a lot ofsuccess and we're going to have
a lot of fun doing it as well.
I left that same message to mypartner ecosystem and say, guys,
you're all part of thisecosystem.
Are you all willing to take thatextra pledge and say, yes, I am
going to commit to doing what Idid today better tomorrow, then
I think we'll be in a muchbetter place.
So to me, the reason I'mbringing that up in this context
(21:26):
of this question is like, thereare opportunities for us in
every single area.
Support, onboarding, how we dotraining, how we did pricing,
how we did product featureprioritization, right?
How we did engineering, how wedid quality, QA, like all the,
test coverage and unit testing.
And how are we using AI?
There's so much hype about AIright now and I'm more than
(21:47):
happy to talk about how we'rethinking about the approach.
Very proud of the approach we'retaking there, by the way.
No bias there.
All of that is super, superimportant, right?
You got to constantly thinkabout every discipline and say,
how can we get better?
And it's not just one magictransformation that happens.
It's the incremental progress.
Every single day work at itbefore you know it.
(22:08):
You look back in a year and golike, shit, we've done so many
amazing things.
dan-balcauski (22:11):
Yeah, there's, I'm sure there's no end to the
list of problems that you'vesolved that are continuing to
try to solve.
You did, you threw out somereally good breadcrumbs there.
And I think, so, an area wheremaybe the finish line, if it
exists at all, is quite blurryfor folks is this area of AI.
And I am curious about yourperspective.
(22:31):
I guess, is there What's acontrarian view you hold about
AI's role in software companies?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (22:39):
Yeah, I don't know if it's a contrarian
view.
I think it's a, it's morepragmatic view, if I may say so.
I think the notion of this rightnow, if you think about AI, like
who hasn't heard about it?
Everybody.
And there's AI in our life,before we even, we knew it as
AI, right?
Some of the value of AI isactually getting lost in the
noise because everybody want it.
(22:59):
Everybody want to say like, Hey,we are an AI company and our
product is powered by AI.
I was in San Francisco a coupleof weeks back.
There's not like a mile you candrive without seeing an AI ad in
a billboard, right?
I mean, that illustrates thepoint because everybody, it's a
gold rush.
The new gold rush is the AIrush, right?
Everybody wants in.
And it's not necessarily a badthing.
(23:20):
The reason why that rush ishappening is there is gold.
There is value in this AI thing.
There's amazing investment thathas gone in.
That we have seen moreinnovation in the last couple of
years than the prior probably adecade or so, particularly with
generative AI, the progress thatwe've seen with the, large
language models.
So for us at Cin7, the way wethink about this is we
monitored, or we call this termcalled AI with Purpose.
(23:43):
Going back to the purposecomment I made, we don't want to
get carried away, again, I'vecommitted that sin before, we're
shiny blue objects, tech for thesake of tech, so I'm not
dan-balcauski (23:54):
all guilty.
We're all
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (23:55):
we're all guilty we're all guilty sinners,
right?
But the purpose of this is likeunderstanding what AI can help
us.
So the way we are thinking aboutthis is, like I said, AI with
purpose.
What does it mean is two things.
One, forget about AI in theproduct.
We are challenging ourselveswithin the company to say, How
can AI help my do my job better?
It doesn't matter what role youplay.
You're a support specialist,you're an onboarding specialist,
(24:16):
you're a product manager, you'rea business analyst, you are a
software developer.
You know you're a sales SDR, youare an ae.
I can keep going on and on eachof those disciplines, we are
consciously investing in toolsand capabilities that actually
offers us new workflows, new usecases that would not have been
possible.
I'll tell you one data set thatthe team reviewed with me last
(24:37):
night.
It's like we're using Zendesk asour support system, right?
We just rolled it out across allof our products and so on.
And we have now used the ZendeskAI feature where you can
actually train the AI with ourknowledge based articles and our
content and so on.
Now it's starting to providematerially impactful deflection,
meaning when a customer engageswith us on a chat, we are now
(24:59):
seeing people that have engagedwith us, more than 50 percent of
those chats don't turn intosupport tickets.
They get the answer.
Which is phenomenal, right?
The reason why it's phenomenalis not because we are getting
the customers talking to thechat.
It's phenomenal because we canactually have really talented
people, rather than answeringyour one on one questions, they
can go focus on solving thingsthat the AI chat cannot solve
(25:20):
for you, right?
So there's an opportunity costhere in terms of the time used
and where we use their time.
So that's one aspect.
We are constantly challengingourselves to say, is there AI
tool, AI power tool capabilitythat we can use internally to
fundamentally rethink how weinnovate and how we work?
The second aspect is how wethink about AI within our
(25:42):
product.
This is where we are being verygrounded, if I may say so, in
understanding the use cases.
What matters for our customers?
In fact, we went and acquiredthis company called Inventoro in
May.
They do demand forecasting.
They built their own.
A deep learning model reallyfascinating team with the great
IP.
We had a lot of sharedcustomers, so we acquired them.
(26:03):
Now we're embedding that intothe product.
A great example of how that usecase is valid.
I was talking to a customeryesterday called the Coconut
Cult.
I don't know if you've heard ofthem.
Great branding.
They make probiotic yogurt.
Really popular.
Okay, see this is the value addservice I provide as a CEO.
I plug my customers products.
And and fascinating.
One of the things they weretalking to me about is like how
(26:25):
forecasting is an area that theyneed to get better and they want
to continue to invest in thatarea.
Great fit for using beyond whatthey're using in SIN 7 with this
new inventory product.
What it can tell them what theirstock out situation is going to
be, how much overstock that theyhave.
So they can continue to run thebusiness more efficiently and
continue to grow the business.
(26:46):
For us, that's what the secondpiece is, which is being
grounded on the use cases on howwe can offer solution that adds
meaningful value that we canonly offer with the AI that we
cannot do it otherwise.
If I can do it with a simplestatistical math, I should be
able to do that, right?
I shouldn't bring the AI intothe mix.
The reason why AI is valuable inthis case is actually machine
(27:07):
learning more than AI.
But to be able to grog all thedata, sales, history and
customer behavior and externalevents to come back and do some
prediction on what your volumeforecast is going to be, that's
super hard to do.
Yeah, sure.
You can build a model inspreadsheet and try to grind it,
but that's very labor intensive.
And this one is automatic.
It's fast.
(27:27):
You can get that insights and gomake business decisions.
So there are several exampleslike that I can talk to you
today, Dan, but that's theapproach we're taking.
One, AI to make how we do thingsbetter and then AI to empower
use cases within the product.
dan-balcauski (27:39):
Yeah, I love that.
So there was a focus onStreamlining internal
operations, giving more power toyour humans to go solve problems
that matter to your customers.
And then two how do youintegrate machine learning AI
writ large, not necessarilyLLMs, because I'm sure in your
world, especially there's a lotof what we used to refer to as
(28:00):
just AI, right?
Statistical, like underlyingmodels yeah.
Where the, where statistics endsand AI begins is always a bit of
a judgment call.
But so those are both beautiful,I guess.
A lot of CEOs are, having tofend off requests from the board
of what is your, AI approach?
What is your, what are you doingin that space?
(28:21):
And, that's not a new question.
They've probably been asking itfor at least the last six,
eight, maybe more quarters atthis point.
Are there any sort of lessonsthat you've learned about, like,
Especially as you look towardswhere you've applied it in the
product side of things in termsof how you've, the lessons
you've learned in terms of howyou evaluate sort of the
(28:42):
maturity, the capability, theability to sort of move forward.
Because I think a lot ofcompanies are still stuck in
this.
I've been asked to sort of showprogress, but then I'm sort of
stuck in this messy middle whereit's good enough for a demo, but
maybe not good enough forprimetime.
Have you run into things likethat?
Are there lessons that you'velearned in that area?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (29:01):
Of course.
I mean, we all do, right?
I mean, that's part of the, Iguess, part for the course, like
we, so one of the first thingsthat we did in AI, I mean, you
talked about generative or LLM,generative AI.
I mean, we have a lot of data,right?
The supply chain industry as awhole.
I always use this term, we aredata rich, insights poor, right?
And how do we become moreinsights driven?
Because data is one thing andpeople say data is the moat.
(29:23):
Right.
If data is the moat, theinsights, it's the water, let's
you keep every elements out ofthe danger, I guess.
But the point there is when wethink about this new technology,
AI is now the topic, but any newtechnology comes in, we need to
start playing with it, right?
There's no way you can just readabout it and then make opinions,
right?
So we did that.
We did that with GenAI.
(29:43):
We said, what is the use casethat we can automate?
We were actually one of thefirst companies to do it, where
we literally add this usingAzure OpenAI to be able to
generate amazing productdescriptions with just a couple
of bullets.
A lot of our customers don'thave a marketing team, right?
They don't have likecopywriters.
And if you look at the productdescription, it's very matter of
(30:04):
fact.
And probably that's what I woulddo if I was asked to write a
product copy, right?
But AI can do this very well,particularly, chat GPT, can
really do this extremely well.
So we put that out as a way ofus trying to get our feet wet
and starting to explore whatdoes that look like.
We thought it'd be a nice fancydemo to your point, right?
And it was like a lot of our AEswere like, Ajay, that's so cool,
(30:26):
man.
Our prospects are always like,Ooh, this is freaking awesome,
right?
So it's good to get theattention.
It's a nice shiny blue object,but is it really useful?
And we have now hundreds ofcustomers using it, right, which
is fun in itself.
But the point of that is not somuch that particular
implementation of it, it's usunderstanding how we can apply
(30:47):
AI to offer something within theproduct at the scale that we
need to do.
So that taught us a lot abouthow we think about pricing of
that feature, how we think aboutrolling out the feature.
We actually did an early adopterprogram there where we recruited
about We just did this inproduct recruitment for
customers that want to,participate in this.
We got like 50 customers in likematter of hours.
(31:08):
And we said, that's it.
We're going to stop it.
Take the 50 customers, put themthrough this journey and see how
they're using this and what thefeedback is.
Work out the kinks before weroll it out.
So that was a one good learningthat came out of that.
Now we're using that model witha lot of the new feature
releases and so on.
And that's what we're extendinginto a lot of our new AI
features.
We're going to do that with thisbig release that's coming up.
(31:28):
With our Inventora acquisitionwe're going to do the same
approach.
Get some early adopters testingit out and continue to push
forward.
Blockchain.
dan-balcauski (31:40):
the use case.
I see way too many companiestaking the path of our brethren
in the web three crypto spacewho came out and said, Oh, now
our product with AI and all thecustomers are like now with
blockchain.
And everyone's like why do Icare?
But, having very concrete, Usecases that drive it forward
versus just, Hey, you get our itseems like the entire design
(32:03):
world, it only has this onesymbol for the AI button, the
little magic stars as
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (32:07):
pretty cool, isn't it?
dan-balcauski (32:10):
It's ma, it's the magic button.
It's magic button.
Well, you threw out some catnipin there where you were saying
you learned some lessons aroundeven pricing that those
capabilities what lead usthrough a little bit of context
around what the situation wasthere and how you approach that
top part of the
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (32:27):
Yeah, I mean, specific to that was
pretty trivial pricing learning,but generally when you think
about pricing, right, the, Imean, I've done fair share of
pricing work myself and And alot of times you end up modeling
and modeling at the end of theday It's you know, it's the
planning and not the plan inthat case, right?
It's making sure you're thinkingabout all the different
variables and at the end of theday It's you know It's what the
(32:47):
customers are willing to pay andthe market is going to tell you
whether you priced it right ornot So to me, I think you've got
to keep a very, you got to bepretty pragmatic about any
pricing project and theprinciple that I always use and
the learning that we got withthat GenAI effort is first we
thought we'll just price itbased on number of product
descriptions and so on.
We looked at the cost equationand tried to keep a margin.
So whatever it's costing us froma compute and data perspective,
(33:12):
we were over complicating it,right?
Because when you did all ofthat, then we need to make it
based on number of tokens andthis and that.
Then how do I explain to you?
If Dan, you put up your hand andsay, well, I have a thousand
products guys, how much does itcost?
Well, a thousand products.
About how many words would youwrite in description?
Like what the frick, seriously.
So if you are, if you have tohave that level of conversation
in pricing, might as you've lostit already.
(33:34):
So one of the key tenets of anypricing discussion is like, can
we keep it simple and stupid?
Right?
Where people just understand itand then they go.
So that's something that we havedone.
We, if you look at our, sinceseven new core pricing
architecture that we launchedlast year.
We introduced the concept ofconsumption based pricing, so
it's not just one pricing forall.
There's obviously base levelmodules that they come in, or
(33:55):
the standard editions, and thenyou can add modules based on
your business needs, whether youwant manufacturing, warehouse
management, POS, B to B, etc.
And then we also have aconsumption based on your sales
order volumes.
The more you grow, we get a youpay more for the value that
you're getting from the product,which I think makes total sense.
So, those are the type of stuffwe get it, we learn it, we put
(34:15):
it in market, and then don't tryto overreact to market reaction
in the first 30, 60, 90 days.
It takes some time.
You got to let it marinate andstart understanding the signals
because sales team, nobody likeschange and particularly nobody
likes pricing changes, so youdon't want to react to every
single feedback.
Oh my God, this customer saidthe consumption pricing is too
high.
(34:36):
Well, if you go keep changingthat, you'll end up creating a
Frankenstein where it will nevermake sense for anybody.
Once you have a conviction onthe model that you've built, you
go let it sit in the market,understand, watch for
escalations, don't go to sleep,keep an eye on it, but don't
react to every noise coming.
Just listen, and after about 90days, you got enough patent
there to say, okay, we got to dosome course corrections here, or
(34:57):
no, what we did is perfectlyfine and we can counter some of
the, objections throughpromotions and campaigns and
discounts.
dan-balcauski (35:04):
I absolutely love that whole answer you gave, and
I could talk to you for a wholeother hour about that topic
alone.
I think one thing that I want topoint out for listeners is I've
seen so many companies doexactly the mistake that, get
trapped in that first Iterationthat you mentioned, which is the
cost coming in on a marginalvariable cost basis is very
(35:25):
concrete.
Therefore I need to match thatto maintain a margin percentage,
the spreadsheet math equals, andthen you do, end up in this
credit slash token based system,which just, it's like pouring
sand in your go to marketengine.
It's just like now every salesconversation has to, is this
belabored.
(35:45):
Conversation about your productarchitecture rather than the
customer's problem, right?
It goes exactly against thegrain you were you're painting
before, right?
And so I think I see so manycompanies get stuck in that of
like, well, we got to make it upAnd so we're gonna charge this,
you know with we don't want youknow Usage to get out of
control.
So we got to have some limitthat we talked to him about.
And it just I believe you guysdid very well in, in that that
(36:08):
approach, we do have to startwrapping up.
I, there's a whole bunch oftopics we didn't even get a
chance to get to, but I do wantto be respectful of your, and
the audience time wrap it upwith a couple rapid fire
questions.
You ready?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (36:20):
Yes, sir.
dan-balcauski (36:21):
What drives you to come to work every day?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (36:24):
Oh my gosh.
I mean, I talked about thisearly on, right?
It's the, it's our customer'spurpose, right?
I spend a lot of time talking toour customers and a lot of our
customers at SMB, we haveorganizations that are, self
funded, bootstrapped, right?
That they have a passion forgoing and building the the next
next best beverage, right?
We have a lot of beveragecompanies.
Alcoholic and non alcoholic.
(36:45):
We have customers that areselling cosmetics, really big
brands, celebrity brands, and soon.
So we got a range of customersfrom self funded to, VC backed
to celebrity funded and so on.
And customers that have foundgreat market fit.
They're selling 50, 100 millionworth of businesses and
businesses that have gonethrough amazing growth.
One takeaway from all of thoseconversations, I probably met
(37:07):
with 60, 70 customers in thelast, 12 months.
And one consistent feedback,I've never heard any of them
talk about the doom and gloom.
Oh my gosh, macro this, macrothat, interest rate this.
No, that's not the conversationthey're having.
Of course, they're having thatstruggle too.
That every one of them isresilient.
Every one of them is predictingdouble digit growth, 2x growth,
(37:27):
3x growth.
I spoke to a customer just, acouple of weeks back.
I've seen 14x growth in the lastyear.
Unbelievable, right?
We have a, I mean, I can giveyou examples and examples of
customers that come in at a veryearly stage and go on.
To me, that's what drives ourpurpose, right?
And what we do, and that's whatgets me super, super excited
about, particularly the problemthat we are solving for.
(37:49):
And and the team is amazing.
I've got, like I said, I've madea couple of jokes about my kids
and family.
I mean, I spent a lot of timetalking to them about business
challenges and so on, and theymotivate me.
I love what I do.
I tell my board this actually inall seriousness, I'll do this
job without a compensation.
The fact that I'm gettingcompensated is a bonus.
dan-balcauski (38:09):
Well, well, make sure your board members don't
don't get a hold of thispodcast.
No, that's awesome.
I'm really glad to hear that.
We all would love to have thattype of career.
You're a very lucky man in thatregard.
Look, if you could give your ifI can give you a billboard and
you could put anything on it forother B to B SaaS CEOs trying to
scale their companies, whatwould it say?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (38:27):
Yeah, I mean, it's going to sound a
little bit of a, a cliche, butwe already talked about this.
It's customer first, right?
I mean, just really stay honestto that, right?
It's easier said than done.
I remember reading a quote, Ithink it was from Robert Half.
It said that when you putcustomer first, they last,
right?
It has a nice play on wordthere, but it's super, super
like, you got to every decisionyou make, think about, are we
(38:51):
doing the right thing?
Just think about your, fromtheir perspective.
I think that's super important.
If I have a, a message at aplatform where we need to go
tell the story, I thinkindependent of what business you
are in, you'll never be wrong bytaking that approach.
dan-balcauski (39:05):
Customer first.
Love it.
Ajoy, this has been fantastic.
If listeners want to learn moreabout SID 7 or you anywhere on
the worldwide webs how can theydo that?
ajoy-krishnamoorthy (39:19):
Yeah, I mean, Cin7.
com is our company website, butof course you can Google my name
or Cin7 or our customers.
I mean, we have amazing contentout there, but Cin7.
com is a good place to start.
dan-balcauski (39:29):
Awesome.
Well, I will put those links inthe show notes for listeners.
That wraps up this episode ofSaaS Scaling Secrets.
Thank you to Ajoy for sharinghis journey insights and
valuable tips for our listeners.
If you found this conversationas enlightening as I did,
remember, subscribe so you don'tmiss out on future episodes.
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